Holiday stress

When the summer holidays are about to start, you know that you are going to play two roles for the oncoming weeks: that of the person on holiday, and that of the person who stays behind. Where are the pitfalls?

When you are the one who stays behind, you are likely to experience some form of stress because you are much more on your own than in a normal working situation. You have your own work to do, and yet you have to cover for your colleagues as well. Progress and decision making may be stressing or delayed because of the absence of the people involved. You no longer can follow your familiar daily routines, and meanwhile the weather outside is very attractive.

When you are on vacation yourself, you not only have the pleasant expectations on the fun-to-come, but you also experience pre-stress: do not leave with your work a mess or too much unfinished jobs, inform the colleagues that cover for you, and meanwhile at home you make the necessary preparations for the vacation. Lest alone the huge expectations of "fun" that accompany the idea of a vacation, which are usually already at strain during packing of the car and the trip to your holiday resort. You put yourself and your family or friends in a situation where they have to live in a very intensive way together, in a strange environment, full of uncertainties, you do other things than normal, and expect that all these ingredients together miraculously will lead to the experience of ultimate fun.

Begin with the realization that the next few weeks will not be ideal. It is going to be warm in the car. There will be traffic jams and road works. Your children will wine. Your partner will give wrong directions, at least once. Your flight will be delayed, or you will arrive later than you expected. Unexpected things will happen more than once. And when you are the person that stayed behind in the office, you will get more requests than you can handle, or will have to do annoying jobs as well.

You have a choice: try to be in control as much as possible, thus trying to limit the unpleasant experiences expected (which is the solution your personality promotes). Or use these experiences to practice a different approach. By expecting less pleasant things to happen also, for a start you do not have to react so surprised when they do happen. And it is all only a matter of time, in a month's time everything is history already. Thus you immediately release the pressure by releasing the goals of an ideal vacation or a good caretaker. With a bit of humor you might even put a big cross through one of the numbers on the list "one hundred things that will go wrong the next few weeks".

Now you consider this to be pessimistic? Get real, and take a closer look at your personal holiday memories. The only certainty there is on a vacation, is that some ingredients of your experiences are likely to be different from your everyday situation, what that will bring to you is a question. But your personality wants you to forget all that and miraculously comes up with some isolated pictures of "great fun. And still, with a bit of self awareness you know very well how you react to changes or diversions from your plans, and a summer vacation is not likely to change that (the same applies to the people that you are going on vacation with), and these are the two main ingredients of your experiences.

But you can learn to choose to not automatically follow the standard response of your personality who tries to control and "have fun". Be aware of the thoughts you have, and the reactions you feel, but do not take yourself too serious in that, nowhere is written that they are a truth in themselves and that you should react to them. Count till ten, take a couple of deep breaths, or do something else that releases your focus on the situation, and then return to it later on and ask yourself whether it is really worth while to react on it. And if that is too much to ask for this moment, then present your outburst of emotions as something that only applies to you, and bring that with a touch of humor:" hey guys, I have to get this out of my system, but do not believe it or take it seriously, it is only a bit of pressure that has to be released." Now you have released the others from the standard response of having to feel attacked, and believe me, that will save you a lot of trouble!